A wholesome society

Runner at the end of Bevan’s run; 190 miles from Nye Bevan’s statue in Cardif to Richmond House, Department of Health, London. Run in 6 days by doctors Clive Peedell and David Wilson between 10th and 15th January 2012 to raise awareness of our coalition government’s privatisation of the National Health Service http://bevansrun.blogspot.com/

Bevan’s Run 2 – “The Bevan-Beveridge run”

Middlesbrough to Newcastle, 42 miles in under 17hours, March 9th-10th, 2012

On Friday 9th of March, Dr David Wilson and myself (Clive Peedell) will be heading off on another long distance run to continue our protests against the Health and Social Care Bill. This time we are aiming our protest at the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference in Newcastle, by running 42 miles in under 17 hours (Middlesbrough to Newcastle). Three posts explaining why you cannot trust the libdems with the NHS.

We will be starting our run at approximately 6pm outside our place of work, James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough. We will be running to Durham, where we will bed down for a few hours, before getting up and starting the second leg at 7am to head to Wesley Square, Newcastle, to join the Keep Our NHS Public rally at 11am. There will then be a march to Baltic Square, Gateshead for a 12.30pm demo against the LibDems involvement in the dismantling of the NHS.

Details of the rally are HERE, so please come along to demonstrate against the NHS reforms

One response to “A wholesome society”

The usual form of the West Lothian Question relates to Scottish Labour MP’s voting on English-only matters which do not affect their constituent. At least in these cases, SLAB MP’s would be prepared to defend to thir own constituents the polices they vote for.

I cannot imagine that any Scottsh Liberal Democrat would dare to defend to his constituents the privatisation of the NSH if it applied to them; that his constituency association would be daft enough to select him if he did, or that the voters would not find such behaviour abhorrent.

Most of the LibDem vote in Scotland is an anti-Tory vote, and by joining the Conservatives in coalition, roughly half their vote deserted them in the Scottish Parliament election in 2011, two thirds of it to the SNP, and the rest to Labour. The SNP is now the preferred choice of the anti-Tory vote in most constituencies notwithstanding that the SNP’s core policy, independence is rejected by the overwhelming majority. Competence, or rather relative competence is a factor too which disadvantages Labour.

Shortly after the 2010 election, I asked for a comfort statement on risks to the NHS from my then SNP MSP, Jim Mather, a minister in the minority SNP government. He supported his opinion as to top level consensus in the SNP by his knowledge of the Health Secretary personally.

Today’s online Scotsman and Herald gives a quote which (despite a headline that says the opposite) iss from the Health Secretary herself.:

“Meanwhile, there was also a strongly-worded attack from Ms Sturgeon on the UK government’s controversial plans to increase private sector involvement in the NHS south of the Border, as she insisted that “there will be no privatisation of the National Health Service” in an independent Scotland.

Ms Sturgeon said: “Unlike its counterpart in England, the NHS in Scotland will remain a public service, paid for by the public and accountable to the public. I say it because I believe that our NHS can and will outperform the privatised experiment south of the Border.”

Ms Sturgeon went on: “In the past, the Union would have been seen as not just the creator but also the guarantor of the values and vision of the post-war welfare state.

“Today, many see that it is the Union, under the Westminster government, that poses the biggest threat to these values and that vision. We have the power to protect our NHS but because benefits and pensions are reserved, we are powerless to protect the disabled from the worst aspects of welfare reforms.

“Independence would give us the power not only to protect Scotland from policies that offend our sense of decency and social cohesion.

“It would also allow us to build a fairer Scotland.””

I believe that delegates from Scottish Liberal Democrat constituencies will be particularly susceptible to lobbying. Many of these people have laboured for decades to build support at local level, and are proud of their achievements. The cannot be happy that the party leadership has trashed their efforts with an insouciance towards Highland casualties to rival WW1 generals.